Consumption of Pop Culture and Tourism Demand:Through the lens of herding behaviour

Herding is a social phenomenon where individuals act collectively as part of a group and make decisions based on the behaviour and choices of others. In this study, we conceptualise herding behaviour on social media via a two-step flow communication model and measured through Google and YouTube search volume. The estimated herding behaviour is used to develop a novel index to measure the online consumption of Korean cultural products. Monthly data between 2013 and 2019 were used to analyse tourist arrivals from 10 countries. Findings confirm that Korean wave, captured by the index, is statistically significant in predicting tourist arrivals. The study provides a generalised proxy of cultural consumption, applicable to other destinations

Online Social Deception and Its Countermeasures for Trustworthy Cyberspace: A Survey

We are living in an era when online communication over social network services (SNSs) have become an indispensable part of people's everyday lives. As a consequence, online social deception (OSD) in SNSs has emerged as a serious threat in cyberspace, particularly for users vulnerable to such cyberattacks. Cyber attackers have exploited the sophisticated features of SNSs to carry out harmful OSD activities, such as financial fraud, privacy threat, or sexual/labor exploitation. Therefore, it is critical to understand OSD and develop effective countermeasures against OSD for building a trustworthy SNSs. In this paper, we conducted an extensive survey, covering (i) the multidisciplinary concepts of social deception; (ii) types of OSD attacks and their unique characteristics compared to other social network attacks and cybercrimes; (iii) comprehensive defense mechanisms embracing prevention, detection, and response (or mitigation) against OSD attacks along with their pros and cons; (iv) datasets/metrics used for validation and verification; and (v) legal and ethical concerns related to OSD research. Based on this survey, we provide insights into the effectiveness of countermeasures and the lessons from existing literature. We conclude this survey paper with an in-depth discussions on the limitations of the state-of-the-art and recommend future research directions in this area.Comment: 35 pages, 8 figures, submitted to ACM Computing Survey

Consumption of pop culture and tourism demand: Through the lens of herding behaviour

Herding is a social phenomenon where individuals act collectively as part of a group and make decisions based on the behaviour and choices of others. In this study, we conceptualise herding behaviour on social media via a two-step flow communication model and measured through Google and YouTube search volume. The estimated herding behaviour is used to develop a novel index to measure the online consumption of Korean cultural products. Monthly data between 2013 and 2019 were used to analyse tourist arrivals from 10 countries. Findings confirm that Korean wave, captured by the index, is statistically significant in predicting tourist arrivals. The study provides a generalised proxy of cultural consumption, applicable to other destinations

Characterising the Social Media Temporal Response to External Events

In recent years social media has become a crucial component of online information propagation. It is one of the fastest responding mediums to offline events, significantly faster than traditional news services. Popular social media posts can spread rapidly through the internet, potentially spreading misinformation and affecting human beliefs and behaviour. The nature of how social media responds allows inference about events themselves and provides insight into human behavioural characteristics. However, despite its importance, researchers don’t have a strong understanding of the temporal dynamics of this information flow. This thesis aims to improve understanding of the temporal relationship between events, news and associated social media activity. We do this by examining the temporal Twitter response to stimuli for various case studies, primarily based around politics and sporting events. The first part of the thesis focuses on the relationships between Twitter and news media. Using Granger causality, we provide evidence that the social media reaction to events is faster than the traditional news reaction. We also consider how accurately tweet and news volumes can be predicted, given other variables. The second part of the thesis examines information cascades. We show that the decay of retweet rates is well-modelled as a power law with exponential cutoff, providing a better model than the widely used power law. This finding, explained using human prioritisation of tasks, then allows the development of a method to estimate the size of a retweet cascade. The third major part of the thesis concerns tweet clustering methods in response to events. We examine how the likelihood that two tweets are related varies, given the time difference between them, and use this finding to create a clustering method using both textual and temporal information. We also develop a method to estimate the time of the event that caused the corresponding social media reaction.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Mathematical Sciences, 201

Development of evidence-based behavioural interventions to reduce inappropriate use of antibiotics beyond clinical settings

Human use of antibiotics in China accounts for a quarter of worldwide antibiotic consumption and mainly occurs in outpatient and community settings. Non-clinical factors for antibiotic use are main drivers of its excessive consumption. To date, almost every intervention has focused exclusively on antibiotic prescribing behaviours, with little attention being paid to antibiotic consumer’s usage behaviours in the community. This PhD study aimed to develop an evidence-based, theory-informed behavioural change intervention to reduce inappropriate use of antibiotics in the Chinese communities. To conduct this programme of research, I employed a mixed-methods approach throughout the study phases, which included: 1) systematic literature reviews on determinants of antibiotic use in China and on behavioural change interventions to reduce unnecessary or inappropriate use of medical interventions, 2) secondary data analyses of large-scale population data on antibiotic use-related knowledge and practice, 3) formative interviews to ensure acceptability and feasibility of proposed interventions, and finally 4) a mixed-methods feasibility evaluation of the pilot intervention. The systematic reviews identified non-clinical factors and potential pathways influencing public’s antibiotic use, and the components of promising behavioural change interventions. Using the survey data, some of the pathways were quantitatively assessed to inform the development of a context-appropriate intervention - reducing access to non-prescription antibiotics in rural China was identified to be a priority. Additionally, (mis-)perceived antibiotic efficacy for upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) was found to be associated with increased odds of antibiotic use in the community. The new knowledge contributed to the design of the proposed intervention. Working with local partners, I developed and conducted a feasibility assessment of a pilot antibiotic take-back programme aiming to reduce household antibiotic storage and unsafe disposal in rural China. The proposed intervention was deemed feasible and appropriate